


Valē

by lilypottersghost



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05, and annoyance, blarke deserves this, but also love, everything canon will never give us, rated m for language and possible content, written out of spite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-07-27 10:37:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16217288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilypottersghost/pseuds/lilypottersghost
Summary: Clarke and Bellamy struggle with the new responsibilities given to them by Monty and Harper, all the while trying to ignore the storm that grows stronger and stronger between them. Facing a new world of new challenges, their bond is tested and ultimately transformed. Words can only go unsaid for so long, and 130 years is long enough.[This fic is calledValē("Farewell") for a few reasons:1. It involves goodbyes but also beginnings.2. It is likely to be my last fic for the 100 for at least a long while, probably ever. I've fallen out of love with the show, but I still have some unfinished story that I feel these characters deserve, so I'm using this fic as a sort of closure. It is, in and of itself, a goodbye.3. Valē can also mean "be strong".]P. S. this is highkey becoming a retelling of the iliad and the odyssey the more i plan it out.





	1. Flores

**Author's Note:**

> SO hello friends this fic is the last fuck i have to give and after this i'm out. i'm in college now and i don't care about the show anymore so i'm writing this fic to fix everything i hate and then put it to rest. i'm still writing narcissus so the final chapter of that should be out within the next few weeks. idk how long this fic will be but probably roughly the same length as narcissus.
> 
> p. s. (can you tell i'm considering a latin minor?)

 

 

> We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.  
>  Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.  
>  ...
> 
> This is why you were born: to silence me.  
>  Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn  
>  to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.
> 
> I improvised; I never remembered.  
>  Now it’s your turn to be driven;  
>  you’re the one who demands to know:
> 
> Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?  
>  Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;  
>  it is your turn to address it, to go back asking  
>  what am I for? What am I for?

—LOUISE GLÜCK, “MOTHER AND CHILD”

* 

It was like watching a field of orchids open together under the moon.

Eyes fluttering open to meet light, smiles blooming upon faces, relief bathing the room in peace.

A peace that Clarke was about to obliterate.

 _Monty and Harper are dead_.

She watched Raven sit up and stretch as if she was waking from an afternoon nap.

 _Monty and Harper are dead_.

Bellamy had found Monty’s body.

She’d assumed Monty had ejected Harper’s body from the ship in the same way they used to float bodies on the Ark, but there wouldn’t have been anybody to do the same for Monty. Once Bellamy and Clarke had grown weary of admiring the new planet and agonizing over the future, Clarke had been searching for a room in which to rest when she’d heard Bellamy cry out.

In this sterile environment, it hadn’t decomposed as much as it would have on earth. It was a bundle of sagging skin, almost hidden under the blankets of what must have once been Monty and Harper’s bed.

She’d rubbed Bellamy’s back as he collapsed to the floor and retched. Nothing but clear fluid came up.

Jordan came to see what the commotion was about, but Bellamy yelled at him not to enter the room.

Bellamy had always been obsessed with shielding innocence at all costs.

Clarke and Bellamy floated Monty’s remains and decided they couldn’t do this alone.

“We need Raven,” Clarke had said simply, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the center of the cryo room.

“Of course,” said Bellamy, sitting across from her with his chin resting on his palm. “And Shaw. They’ll both be helpful.”

“Diyoza,” she ventured.

He nodded. “She’ll know more about Eligius III than we do.”

“Exactly.” _They’re all we’ll need_ , Clarke was about to say, but held her tongue and waited for Bellamy to give the final word. Part of her was standing with her toes on the edge of a cliff, staring down at an open-mouthed valley, waiting for him to say, _Echo_ , and for her heart to fracture.

But he clasped his hands together. “I think they’ll be enough to start.”

And so they were in agreement.

Three souls to awaken: Raven, Shaw, and Diyoza.

 _Monty and Harper are dead_.

Raven launched herself at Clarke and Bellamy as soon as she regained full consciousness, trapping them both in a fierce embrace.

“I missed you guys!” she exclaimed, standing back and smirking at them. “What has it been, ten years?”

She seemed to notice the change in Bellamy and Clarke immediately. Her face fell.

“What happened?” she asked as if she’d already accepted it.

Clarke and Bellamy relayed the truth to her in tandem, one picking up the story as soon as it became too heavy for the other, until Raven was fully informed except for one last, painful detail:

 _Monty and Harper are dead_.

It was now that Clarke beckoned Shaw and Diyoza, who had been listening from a small distance, over to join them. Raven would need Shaw for this.

She was asking if Monty and Harper had woken up yet, and, “Oh, how old will they be? This is so weird!”

“Raven…” Bellamy began gently as if handling a delicate baby bird in the fingers of his voice.

Again, he almost didn’t have to tell her. She knew from the look on his face, the gentleness of his birdlike voice.

Shaw held her as she wept. Clarke tried not to feel that this was somehow her fault.

Why did she always feel so responsible for these people, even years later? She would never be able to shake the feeling that whenever anything bad happened to any of them, it was somehow because of she’d done wrong, a crime she’d committed somewhere along the line, a consequence of her inadvertent treachery.

Would she ever be able to bring happiness to her friends? Or was she truly an omen of death?

A steady hand rested on her shoulder, wrestling her heart away from guilt for one precious moment.

Bellamy squeezed her shoulder tighter as her eyes landed on his.

 _We can get through this_.

She recalled a century ago, when she had let her tired head fall on their joined hands, drained of the energy it took for her to let go of her guilt for long enough to watch him write her name down. _If I’m on that list, you’re on that list_. Now, panic gripped her once again. She hadn’t written Monty or Harper’s names on that list.

 _They are dead_.

“Clarke?” Bellamy asked, hushed. He was too soft with her, too forgiving.

“I need some air.”

“Don’t go too far.”

“All right.”

His hand slid from her shoulder.

The echoes of teardrops falling from orchid petals followed Clarke down the hallway.

*

 

“We have ourselves a populated planet.” Raven’s lips pursed as soon as the words left them.

The glow from the screen in front of them made Bellamy’s eyes burn, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of the red dots and lines across the landscape below them, indicating signals being sent and received. Evidence of technology assumedly being used by intelligent beings.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Diyoza muttered.

Bellamy didn’t know what to say, while Shaw had gone noticeably pale.

A populated planet meant the possibility of war. Or if you’re one of the hundred, the inevitability of it.

Clarke, on the other hand, was already pacing. “We have to send them a message.”

“Already on it,” Shaw and Raven said in unison, their fingers flying over the control panels.

Raven glanced back at Bellamy and Clarke. “What should it say?”

Clarke looked at him expectantly.

He shrugged. “Uh—we come in peace? Please don’t kill us without asking?”

Clarke snorted. “We like our people without spears in their chests.”

“And no poisoned knives please!” Raven chimed in.

Clarke’s face darkened. “Or death by a thousand cuts.”

Diyoza and Shaw looked at them with intense alarm.

Catching their discomfort, Clarke nudged Shaw’s shoulder. “I told you it was fucked up after we landed, remember?”

“Yeah, but—”

“We have a problem,” Raven suddenly announced.

Shaw refocused on the screen. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Bellamy asked, not liking their concern.

“We can’t send them a message.” Raven threw her hands up, backing away from the screens as her fingers tightened into frustrated fists. “The New Grounders blocked our fucking signal.”

 

The common room in the crew’s quarters was too quiet, or not quiet enough. Bellamy missed the pure silence of Earth; space offered only the perpetual humming that he truly believed drove him somewhat insane over the six years after Praimfaya.

The first signs that perhaps Bellamy needed sleep were a headache, a craving for moonshine, and an incessant desire to find Clarke and… and _what?_ Talk? Argue? Rest his head on her shoulder and cry for seven hours? Being around her felt like standing beside both a stranger and his best friend at the same time. He didn’t have a word for what he wanted from her.

Monty and Harper… the wind left his chest every time he remembered. Just yesterday, they had been alive… but then again, why was he mourning them when they got more than any of them could ever hope for? A life, a home, a family, a son…

He used to be so envious, watching them on the ring. They never wavered, never faltered in their love for one another, were never separated.

It was in those moments that he’d inexplicably ached for Clarke.

Now here he was, still aching.

For what?

The reminder of her name came to him in the form of Jordan dropping a bowl of algae, the sound bouncing off the walls of the small mess hall.

 _Echo_.

Still, he ached.

Raven’s voice came to rest on his shoulder, its softness ticking his ears. “You okay?”

“I know I should be,” Bellamy said as she sat beside him on the couch in the common area in the center of the crew’s quarters. “They got to live such a happy, full life.”

“But they did it without us,” Raven said, tears in her eyes. “I always thought… once everything was finally over… that we’d all do that together. But they gave up on that dream.” She sniffed and wiped furiously at her eyes. “Why does this feel like Jasper all over again?”

He swallowed hard and put his arm around her, trying to remain strong for her. “It isn’t Jasper again. They got to have a family—”

“Their family was sleeping in the cryo pods they walked by every day!” She twisted herself from his grasp and stood.

“Raven—”

“I need to take a walk.”

And off she flew. He turned to watch her go and caught sight of a timid Clarke, hair mussed from sleep, standing just outside her own bedroom door, worried eyes following Raven.

“Hey,” Bellamy greeted her.

“Hey.”

There wasn’t much else to say. Slowly, tentatively (two words he never associated with Clarke before Praimfaya), she replaced Raven beside him on the couch.

“Diyoza thinks I need to go down there.”

Bellamy balked. “What? No.”

“I don’t disagree with her.”

“I do!”

“Think about it, Bellamy. You heard her in the cockpit. All of Eligius III were nightbloods. She just thought it was for space travel, but you all survived the journey without it. There must be enough radiation on the surface of the planet to require it.”

“So we’ll wake up Abby and make more nightbloods.”

“My mom doesn’t have the equipment she had in Becca’s lab. It’ll have to be bone marrow. If I can go down there and scope it out—”

“And what, convince them to Mount Weather themselves?”

“What other choice do we have?”

He gripped her knee, but removed his hand at her sharp intake of breath, feeling oddly rejected at her discomfort. “Make me a nightblood so I can go with you,” he said regardless.

She stared at him, incredulous. “Bell—”

But then an alarm loud enough to wake the frozen blared through the prison ship.

“ _Attention, invaders!_ ” screamed a foreign voice over the loudspeaker. _“We have gained control of your systems. You have four hours to leave our orbit before we cut the power._ ”


	2. Valē

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay this is… a lot. the Conversation™ in this was the first thing i ever wrote for this fic, and even though i’m working on my fantasy novel for nano, i just had to finish up this chapter because it was burning a hole in my pocket. this shitshow doesn’t deserve clarke griffin.

 

 

 

 

> Plunging ahead  
>  into the dark and light at the same time  
>  eager for sensation
> 
> as though you were some new thing, wanting  
>  to express yourselves
> 
> all brilliance, all vivacity
> 
> never thinking  
>  this would cost you anything,  
>  never imagining the sound of my voice  
>  as anything but part of you—
> 
> you won't hear it in the other world,  
>  not clearly again,  
>  not in birdcall or human cry,
> 
> not the clear sound, only
> 
> persistent echoing  
>  in all sound that means good-bye, good-bye—
> 
> the one continuous line  
>  that binds us to each other.

                                         —LOUISE GLÜCK, “END OF WINTER ”

*

Raven appeared at the doorway, chest heaving, the second the alarm ended. “Clarke,” was all she said.

Bellamy’s heart fell from his ribcage and landed in the pit of his stomach. “No,” he seethed. “See if you can regain control of our communication systems first.”

She shook her head. “Shaw’s already on it, but they’ve got over a century of technology on their side. We need to prepare Clarke for the worst.”

“But they have control. We won’t be able to launch—”

“The dropships are separate. All I’d have to do is manually override the airlock, which is easy.”

“Well, then—”

“Bellamy, the fact of the matter is, if Clarke isn’t down there in less than four hours to try to talk them out of it, we will all die of suffocation!”

Clarke, who until this point had remained silent, placed a gentle hand on Bellamy’s arm, then quickly let it fall as if his skin had burned her.

“It’s out of our hands,” she said and then turned to Raven. “How fast can you get a dropship ready?”

She bit her lip. “Give me an hour.”

“I said _no_!”

Clarke went to touch his shoulder, but he swiped her hand away. “Bellamy—”

“Make me a nightblood. I’ll go instead.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head in hopelessness. He felt like screaming when the expression ripped open his brain and revealed a memory: the look on her face after he’d said, _I’ve got you for that_.

It was happening again. It was all happening again.

 _Raven’s premonition came true_.

“That would take too long,” Clarke said, oblivious to his quickly rising panic. “I don’t even think we have the equipment.”

Bellamy’s knees felt weak under him. He ran frantic hands through his hair as he tried to get a grip. Unable to control his breathing, he knew the panic had him in its clutches, and he was never getting out.

Hands on his shoulders. A voice. “ _Bellamy, breathe_.”

“I—” he was trying to say. “I—I’ll go with you. This—time I—go with you.”

Gentle arms took him and lowered him to the ground.

“ _Breathe, Bellamy. Breathe_.” She showed him how, pressed a palm to his chest. “ _Breathe_.”

He tried. He tried for her. One breath in, a long one out. Nose, mouth. Nose, mouth.

When he had regained control, he realized he’d never taken his eyes off of her face. He realized he’d made a scene.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, strangely embarrassed. He was supposed to be a leader. He was supposed to know how to be strong.

“Don’t,” Clarke said, and he couldn’t place her expression.

“It’s just—” he tried to say, but his voice broke. “It’s happening again.”

She shook her head vehemently, her blond hair falling in front of her stony face. “Don’t do that.”

“Clarke,” Raven said from the doorway, as if guilty for interrupting, but not quite because she was Raven. “I have to prepare the dropship, and you have to learn how to land it. We have to go.”

 

*

They stood outside the airlock, just the two of them, ten minutes left. Raven had spent the past hour and a half teaching Clarke how to land safely, while Bellamy watched. Clarke would catch his eyes on her constantly, as though he were trying to commit her to memory.

Now, Bellamy was a wildfire raging from his pacing feet to the tips of his tousled hair. Clarke, sitting on a bench in the center of the room, was a body of water held back by a flimsy dam.

It was about to break.

“Could you stop?”

He stopped pacing.

“Thanks,” Clarke sighed, wiping the sweat from her brow. She’d forgotten how hot these suits were.

Bellamy turned to face her, his eyes desperate. “You have to come back.”

“Or you’ll have to come down.”

“I don’t care. Either way. You can’t die again.”

“I didn’t—”

Raven’s voice sounded over the intercom. “Ten minutes ’til takeoff!”

Bellamy threw himself beside Clarke on the bench.

“Clarke,” he said.

“Bellamy,” she said.

Their eyes wouldn’t leave each others’.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “For telling Madi to take the Flame. For leaving you tied up in that room—”

Clarke stopped him with, “What are you doing?”

His brow furrowed. “I’m apologizing.”

“No, you’re saying goodbye. This isn’t goodbye, Bellamy.”

“Clarke—please, let me say this.”

“Don’t waste your breath. You’ll be able to tell me when we meet again.”

Bellamy looked like his was holding back tears. “You realize what’s happening here, right?”

She shrugged, uncomfortable under the intensity of his gaze. “Enlighten me.”

“Last time we parted, I didn’t let you say goodbye. I thought we would have six years together. I didn’t understand why you were so intent on telling me the things you tried to. I regretted that for six years, Clarke. Please let me say goodbye now.”

“No,” she said, resolute. “You don’t get to lose faith in me. Not again.”

“What do you mean?”

“ _You_ were the one who said you believed in the nightblood solution. _You_ told me to have hope. And then you assumed I was dead for six years. You never thought—never even considered—the possibility that I’d survived?”

Bellamy seemed speechless, but Clarke was just getting started.

“And no, I don’t think this is goodbye, because I waited for six years and you still came down! For six years everything pointed to the possibility of you being dead, but you weren’t!” Her voice grew very quiet so it wouldn't break under tears. The dam had sprung a leak. “You were never dead, and neither was I.”

His breath shook as he dropped his head in his hands, as if unable to meet her eyes any longer. “But you were. To me, at least. You weren’t up there, watching Praimfaya happen from above—”

Clarke scoffed. “I would have given anything to _watch_ —”

“I had dreams every night for almost a year! Of you, burning from the inside out, skin boiling, and I was helpless to stop it. Madi told me that you called us every day. I know you never lost hope, but I didn't have that privilege.”

It was Clarke’s turn to be speechless.

“You haunted me, Clarke. I know you weren’t dead. And I’m so, so thankful that you aren’t. But it still feels surreal. I watched you die every night.”

Her heart squeezed with sadness for him, but also with relief. “I… I didn’t think you cared.”

He lifted his head to look at her again, incredulous. “What?”

“When you came back… ever since you came back… nothing.” _Say it, Clarke. Just tell him_. “It just—I didn’t think I mattered as much to you. Like I used to.”

He shook his head, eyes wide and confused. “Clarke, no. _No_. How could you think that?”

“How could I think anything different?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said I wasn’t your family. You left me alone in that room—”

“Clarke, you know that wasn’t—”

“I know you're sorry. I know I fucked up when I left you there, but—but… you took everything from me that day. _Everything_.”

“Clarke—”

“I never told you this, but after Praimfaya, I was alone for three months before I found Madi.”

“ _Clarke_ —”

“Let me. Please.”

He acquiesced, his lips tight together, jaw popping. Part of her felt guilt, but she squashed it. If hearing her speak of this brought him pain, it would be nothing compared to what she had felt. She had to explain this to him, and to do so she would have to go back to the beginning. She had to make him understand.

“I went to Polis first, to see if I could get to the bunker. I couldn’t. I knew when I got there and saw the tower crumbled on the ground that it would be useless to try, but I had nowhere else to go. So I dug as far as I could—” her voice wavered, “—and screamed for my mom. But then the rubble collapsed and I knew I had to leave.

“I went to Arkadia next. I have no idea why. Maybe it was an instinct, a need to go home. But it wasn’t home anymore. I didn’t find any comfort there.” All she’d found was more misery. “It—it didn’t feel like the place I knew. I tried to envision us walking together through the gates like we did so many times before, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t find you there no matter how hard I tried. But I did find a radio.

“So I called you. And when Madi said 'you,' she meant 'you' _singular_. Sometimes I talked to the others, but it was really... just you. What Madi didn’t tell you is that for a long while, you were the only thing that kept me going. I used to tell Madi you kept me sane, but that’s a lie. You kept me _alive_ , Bellamy. Well, not _you_ , obviously, just the thought that maybe you could hear me, that you were alive. Nothing else—” she swallowed hard. “Nothing else was alive. It was only me. I was the _only_ living thing. But envisioning you up on the ring, hearing my voice. That was enough, until…”

Bellamy tensed at that one, little word. _Until_.

Clarke was spiraling deep into memory. “The desert made me doubt everything. It was so hot, and there was nothing for miles. I didn’t know where I was going, but worse, I didn’t know _why_. I was out of the water, and I couldn’t even remember how long it had been since I’d eaten.” She bit her lip. “No—wait, the bugs. I’d eaten some bugs off the windshield a few days prior. I thought that if I could find where the bugs had come from, I’d find more food. Because—”

“The bugs need to eat something,” Bellamy chimed in. “You were looking for what ate the bugs.”

She nodded, remembering how that was all they’d talked about back when they’d learned about Praimfaya, and the bugs had just quieted the night she and Bellamy went with Jaha to find the bunker, which had turned out to be useless. _What happened to us deserving a lucky break?_ she’d said to him back then. Bellamy had smiled. It had felt like a small victory. Now, the memory saddened her.

“I found it. A bird. I followed it in circles but kept losing track of it before it could lead me anywhere. I was too weak… I fell in the sand.”

Clarke felt panic rising within her just from the sheer pain of the memory. It was like a fingernail digging into the lining of her heart, a wound she was picking open to show Bellamy how it bled. That was the scary part. Showing Bellamy. She didn’t used to be scared of showing him any part of her.

She dug the words out of her memory. “I felt… hollow. Like the barrel of a gun. When I touched it, it was hot.”

Bellamy more than tensed; his hand reached for hers and clutched it so hard his knuckles turned white, like an instinct she would have thought would be long dead. His breath mirrored hers, fast and labored. She was hurting him. She had to keep going.

“Guns are usually cold, like bodies. Because guns make bodies. They make warm things cold. But the gun was hot. The metal had heated up in the sun, I think. That was the first time in a long time I let myself think… that maybe you hadn’t made it. Your hand was always warm, Bellamy. Always warm. And guns are cold. So in the thick of my mind, if the gun was warm, then that meant that your body—” she choked on her words— “your body could have been still up in space, long suffocated, _cold_. And I was down there like a fucking idiot, using a radio that didn’t work to call a body that was cold.” Her voice had risen in an effort to outrun the pain, and her face was wet with tears she hadn’t realized were falling. She couldn’t bear to look at Bellamy, from whom soft sobs were sounding, but then she did. So much of her own pain was reflected in his brown eyes, and, like an undercurrent, desperation.

His hand raised to touch her shoulder, but she held up her own in a silent _no_. His hand retreated.

“I was going to do it. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. I was alone, and always would be. But then the bird touched down again, and I followed it to the Valley. I used the bullet that would have killed me to kill the bird.”

She sighed, wiping her tears and trying to collect herself. “But I had only solved one problem. I had food, water, and even a place to sleep at night, but I was still alone. I had to burn all the bodies when I found the village. They’d gathered in the church as if God could have saved them. The stench reminded me of Mount Weather, the last time I was alone…

“You know what’s strange? After Mount Weather, I spent three months the same way. Without anybody else. But I _wanted_ to be like that, so it didn’t feel like torture. But after Praimfaya, it _was_ torture. I think it was because, for the first time, I had saved everyone without much loss. I had done it. For the first time since we’d landed, I felt whole. Like I finally deserved you. And you weren’t there.” Her eyes flitted to Bellamy’s once before darting back to the safety of the stars.

“Then I found Madi, and I had a purpose again. To keep her alive. To raise her, do right by her, make sure she was loved. Like you did for Octavia. She saved my life. I wouldn’t have lasted six years without her. But you saved me, too. And I still radioed you because even with Madi, I was still lonely. I was without my friends, my people. I was without _you_.”

“I—”

“Do you understand? Do you see, now? I was wrong to leave you to die. I will never forgive myself for that. But I want you to understand why I did it. Because that day… you stole my daughter and gave her to the commanders. But you also took _yourself_ away from me by betraying me. And I was so—” she had to cough around her closed throat, her stuffed nose. “I was so deep in that sand again, hot gun in my hand, and everything was clouded over with grief. I’d lost _everything_. Madi.” She looked at him. “And you.”

Bellamy breathed a shaking, guttural noise through his tears.

“You and Madi are all I have. Madi. You. It doesn’t even matter to me that one hundred and thirty years have passed, that I’ll never see Earth, my home, again. Because I have you and Madi. She’s my daughter. And you… I don’t know what you are.” To her surprise, a laugh rose in her chest. “But I feel at home with you. Like you encompass everything good that earth once was to me.”

He sniffed. “I don’t deserve that.”

She shook her head. “You do.” She took his chin in her hand, forcing his gaze up to meet hers. “You deserve more than I’ve ever been able to give you.”

He looked like he was about to respond, but Raven’s voice blared over the intercom. “ _Take off in two minutes!_ ”

He took Clarke’s cheeks in his hands. “This isn’t goodbye,” he said, as though making it true with sheer willpower.

“But—”

“No,” he said.

“Bellamy, just let me say—”

He literally covered her mouth with his palm. “I know what you want to say. ‘ _People listen to you, you inspire them. Because of this_.’” He touched her heart. “ _But in order to survive, you need to use this too_.” He kissed her forehead.

“You remembered that?”

“Of course I—”

“ _Clarke!_ ” blasted Raven’s voice again. “ _Take-off in one-thirty!_ ”

“I have to go,” Clarke said, panic rising in her voice.

“This isn’t goodbye,” he repeated, walking to the airlock door. She followed him, even though it was away from the dropship.

Clarke didn’t believe him for a second. There was a thing clawing its way from her heart up to her throat with relentless determination, quickly approaching her mouth. This time, it demanded to be heard.

“Sixty seconds!”

The airlock doors began to screech between them.

He held her hand tighter.

“Stay safe,” he commanded her.

“Tell me I won’t be alone,” Clarke blurted out, tears tightening her voice. “Tell me you’ll answer my fucking calls.”

“I’ll answer your fucking calls,” he promised.

“Tell me something good.”

“I’ll be here waiting for you when you get back.”

Her face contorted into a strange, ironic smile. “Like you waited for me last time?” she said within a hopeless laugh.

Bellamy stared at her, desperately confused, but was snapped out of it by:

“ _Ten!_ ”

The doors were almost closed, and they had to let their hands go before their fingers were sliced in half.

“ _Nine._ ”

Panic. “Bellamy—”

“ _Eight._ ”

“Don’t say goodbye!” he shouted.

“ _Seven, six, five…_ ”

She sealed herself in the dropship, buckled her seatbelt, and double-checked that everything was ready. She drank in what she could see of him, just a sliver between the door and the window of the dropship, committing everything to memory in case she would have to spend any number of years drawing him. Panic gripped her again. The determined thing had reached her tongue, demanding to be set free.

“ _Four, three…_ ”

“Bellamy—” She could only be heard over the radio, now, could only hear his grainy voice through the thing in her ear while she stared at his face through the opening in the door.

“Don’t—”

“ _Two._ ”

“I love you.”

She caught one, wild look in his eye, before—

“ _One._ ”

The door sealed shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it / that i provided you with something that the shitshow neglected to give us. clarke is my girl. i love her. okay bye. see u when i post the next chapter*
> 
> *coming at you soon: braven friendship feelings, and bellamy finally does the one thing show bellamy should have done in episode 6 of season 5.


	3. Amata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amata - perf. passive ppl from the verb "amare," to love, literally meaning "she having been loved," translated to mean "the beloved woman," or "dear".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for being MIA - the first semester of college was a wild ride! but i'm on break now so expect more updates - narcissus is coming at you soon.

 

 

 

> Surely spring has been returned to me, this time   
> 
> not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet   
> 
> it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

 

                     - Louise Glück, "Vita Nova"

 

 _Fuck_ …

He clutched his head in his wild, desperate hands. Clarke had peeled back his entire world and then shredded it to pieces.

 _Fuck_.

Bellamy punched the glass door behind which she had just disappeared. The stinging in his knuckles didn’t hurt compared to the remnants of her words in his head.

_I love you._

He wanted to reach out and pull the dropship back with his bare, aching hands. _What the fuck, Clarke?_

Their timing was the epitome of _stupid_.

 _Stupid, stupid_.

He ran down the hall to the common room with the big window, at which rest of the ship’s occupants were gathered. Raven watched too, her hands shaking over her mouth, as the dropship descended to the unknown below with Clarke inside.

 _Fuck_.

He’d let her slip through his fingers again.

A vision of her wry smile flickered before him. _Like you waited for me last time?_

He wanted to hold time by the throat and squeeze. He wanted to choke it to death so that he and Clarke could exist apart from its cruel hands. The Bellamy who was ready to love her and the Clarke who was ready to love him could be together without being pulled apart.

She was just out of reach.

And though the air in the metal room sent him echoes of his sworn attachments, reminding him of his honor and all that should prevent him from it—

He loved her.

 

+

 

Everything around her was falling, cracking open, dissipating around the prayer on her lips, until it all stopped. The motion that had held her in its clutches suddenly died. She opened her eyes.

“Thank you,” she breathed to God, or whatever had protected her from death once again.

The dropship quieted, and though Clarke knew she should open the door—make quick work of finding the people responsible for seizing control of the Eligius ship and stop them from killing everyone she loved—she took a moment to allow herself to breathe.

Her fingers shook as she grabbed the small detachable radio from the dashboard. She tried to click it to life, but it remained dead.

Fuck.

 _Bellamy, I made it_ , she yearned to yell into the radio, but he would not hear her.

And that alone was what made her finally open the door and step onto the ground of the new planet.

 

+

 

“Should she have called by now?” Bellamy asked Raven, agitation building in his chest. “She should have landed by now, right?”

But Raven didn’t answer him. She was watching the screen in front of her, brow furrowing. A realization seemed to burst behind her eyes. “They’re attacking,” Raven said, fingers flying over the control panel.

“What? They said we have some time.”

“They’re targeting the cryo chambers—fuck, we have to wake them up.”

“What? We don’t have anything ready to treat the injured—”

“Now, Bellamy! While I still have control— _fuck!_ I’m doing it now.”

Bellamy ran down the hall to the cryo chambers, watching as their people simultaneously emerged from slumber, talking amongst themselves in hushed, confused tones. He ran to Murphy, who was already crying out in pain.

“Abby!” he yelled. “Abby!” But the doctor was struggling, half-awake, to get to Kane. Indra, too, joined her, and together they began to tend to him. Indra yelled for a stretcher, and Diyoza sprung into action.

 _Fuck_. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. They were supposed to be woken up in stages, so that the injured had time to be treated one by one without this confused chaos.

Emori ran to Murphy’s side, holding his hand. “We’re gonna have to do the best we can to treat him.”

“Bellamy,” came Madi’s voice on his other side. Briefly leaving Emori to tend to Murphy, he went to Madi’s bedside. She was rubbing her eyes, looking very bewildered and very twelve. “Where’s Clarke?”

The need to protect her took over. “Clarke is safe, helping us. Madi, I need you to keep your people calm for me while I help Murphy and Kane, all right?”

“I’ll help Heda,” said Echo, coming to his side.

Don’t call her that, Bellamy almost snapped. Something deep inside him still told him that this wasn’t right. A child—Clarke’s child—shouldn’t be leading them. But it had been his doing.

“Okay,” he said.

He moved to return to Murphy, but Echo grabbed his arm with a pleading look.

“I’ll explain later.” He shook her off and went back to trying to contain this chaos with his two hands, like always.

 

+

 

At first glance, not much was different. She could have been on Earth, and her heartstrings constricted around the memories. But then, the differences began to glare at her. The day was brighter with two sources of light instead of just one; sunlight both filtered in through the leaves above her, as well as slanted sideways from the horizon to highlight the trunks of the unbelievably tall trees. The grass under her feet was richer, darker, bluer in hue than the pale green to which she was accustomed.

“Hands up!” a gruff and unforgiving voice shouted from the bushes.

Having expected this, Clarke quietly complied. She had made the mistake of becoming a hostile intruder on Earth, and it had earned her too many dead friends to count on her fingers.

“I’m unarmed,” she said, voice shaking as she recalled the first words she’d heard out of Bellamy’s mouth in six years. In that moment, she’d known. She’d rejoiced and known she would be safe. He’d always meant safety, until he hadn't anymore. She missed him.

“Prove it,” commanded the voice.

“Check my ship, and see for yourself. Search me, too. I just want to talk.”

Like ants from a hill, they emerged from the underbrush, creeping toward her in harsh black uniforms that seemed to suck away the suns’ light.

“I’m going to pat you down,” said a woman as she approached, hesitantly lowering her gun.

As the woman searched her, Clarke got a closer look at her face and saw that she was not much older than her. A spatter of freckles covered the surfaces of her cheeks, her shiny black hair cropped short, her bangs getting in her eyes as she rubbed her palms down Clarke’s legs.

“Clear,” the woman announced to her companions.

“Clear,” the man from earlier said from the dropship.

Walking until he was in front of Clarke, the woman a step behind him, he assessed Clarke, looking her up and down. The rest of their group—about ten people—assembled around the clearing. “Who are you?” said the man.

“Clarke Griffin. I am a representative of the people of Earth and the occupants of the Eligius IV ship that is in your orbit. You made a threat. I’m here to tell you that we pose no threat to you.”

“You want mercy,” inferred the woman.

“We’ve traveled long, fought hard. Just like your people must have.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. Clarke had struck a chord in him. “Why aren’t you still on Earth?” he asked.

 _We destroyed it_ , she almost said, but she bit her tongue.

“It suffered after a nuclear war. Then, one hundred years later, the nuclear reactors melted down and destroyed it again. We are all that’s left of the human race. At least, we thought. Until we got here.”

The woman turned her head until her face was very close to the man’s ear—giving Clarke the sense that they were involved, at least—and whispered something.

“You sound like trouble,” the man said to Clarke.

“I have four hundred members of the human race waiting up there, including my own daughter. You don’t want to kill them. We need to survive. Together.”

“We have over five hundred here. We’re doing just fine.”

“In my experience, the human race is a fragile thing.”

He was silent.

“Please,” Clarke whispered. “We’re tired. We’ll bring you no trouble. Call off the cyber attack, and we can work something out.”

Her aptitude for cunning manipulation must have frozen and died away while she was in cryo. She just wanted a bed to sleep in, for Madi to live another day, for Bellamy—

“Fine.” The man lifted a radio from his belt and clicked it on. “Haverford for Control. Release Eligius IV. Repeat: release Eligius IV.”

A moment of static and then, “Control for Haverford. Releasing Eligius IV now.”

Clarke exhaled.

But she had only a moment of relief before a sharp crack sounded through the clearing and pain bloomed in her thigh. All she saw before she went under was the woman lowering her gun.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for being mean. come yell on tumblr with me if you need to. comments and kudos are very much appreciated and lead to more and more writing!!! i love all of you for reading this <3


	4. Bellum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bellum: noun, "war", "warfare".

 

 

 

>  
> 
> no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmas—oh unanswerable
> 
> affliction of the human heart: how to divide
> 
> the world’s beauty into acceptable
> 
> and unacceptable loves! On the shores of Troy,
> 
> how could the Greeks know
> 
> they were hostages already: who once
> 
> delays the journey is
> 
> already enthralled; how could they know
> 
> that of their small number
> 
> some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure,
> 
> some by sleep, some by music?

                      -Louise Glück, "Parable of the Hostages"

 

It was moments after the injured were rushed to medbay when Raven’s voice echoed through the ship over the intercom. “All systems have been recovered and are operational. Sorry for the malfunction.”

Bellamy breathed for the first time since Clarke left, it seemed. She did it. Their attackers had let them go.

He ran to the control room. “Raven.”

She threw him one of her big, triumphant smiles. “Clarke saved us again,” she said, full of pride.

“Does this mean we can get the radio working?”

Raven bit her lip. “I’ll see what I can do. You should go help everyone calm the fuck down, all right?”

“Got it.”

He started out the door, but was stopped by Raven’s strangled voice, “Bellamy, wait.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Now that everyone is awake, there’s something you should know.”

 

Echo found him once the chaos had died down. He was sitting, arms crossed, staring out the window at the planet below. Like he used to on the Ring.

After about an hour of calming everyone down, having Madi explain to them what had happened, and treating the wounded, they still hadn’t heard from Clarke.

“So…” Echo said, and Bellamy cringed. Raven had told him what had happened, how Echo had tried to kill Clarke. She hadn’t told him for any specific reason, only that she thought he should know, and she’d been suspecting that Echo hadn’t yet told him.

He’d been chewing on the knowledge ever since, wishing Raven had never told him. Now, he was spiraling, questioning everything he thought he knew. In Clarke’s absence, he thought he had fallen in love with a changed, honest woman. That had been the only thing he’d used to justify it. But he had been wrong, and he had fallen in love with a lie.

Echo nudged his shoulder.“You’ve been awake for how long?”

“A day. I don’t know.” Time moved oddly in space, and Bellamy hadn’t looked at a clock until Clarke went down there.

Echo’s lips pursed. “Why you and Clarke? Why didn’t you wake me up when you woke up Raven, Diyoza, and Shaw?”

_We didn’t need you_. “We only needed them.” How was he going to handle this? How could he, with anger already stirring in his throat?

“Why you and Clarke?” she said, reverting to her real question.

“Harper and Monty wanted us to. We are who they chose.”

“I guess… I just thought it was strange. She wasn’t there, on the Ring. I was.”

He clenched his jaw, unclenched it. Tried to contain his venom before it spat out, but he failed. “No,  _you_  weren't there. Before. When you were trying to kill us, Clarke and I were the leaders. We kept everyone alive. Together.”

She flinched at Bellamy’s voice. “Woah. Where is this coming from?"

He bristled. “Raven told me. What you did. Were you ever gonna tell me, or do you at least have the decency to be too ashamed?”

“What?”

“To tell me you tried to choke my best friend to death!”

Echo stepped back, aghast. “On your behalf.”

Bellamy couldn’t take her surprise, couldn’t believe he’d spent nearly two years with someone who still had the capacity to do this.He stood up, stepping closer to her, in her face to try to read her, to get her to understand. “I would have never asked you to do that. Echo you had to—you _have_ to know that.”

Her confusion made him even sicker. “Bellamy—”

“How could you try to kill the woman you watched me mourn for years?” With every word he said, she grew more and more defensive, pushing him closer to the edge.

“She left you to die!” she said, indignant. “If you had been there, you would have—”

“Echo, you aren’t hearing me. If I had been there, I would have shot you sooner than let you kill her.”

“I—”

He threw his hands up, at a loss. “The fact that you thought I would be as fucking ruthless as you are—”

“Bellamy—”

“—as violent as you claimed to no longer be! You must not know me at all. Or I you. You said you’d changed, but you’re the same Azgeda killer I spent months fighting on earth.”

“ _Bellamy_ —!”

He slammed his fist against the window, grateful for Echo’s immediate silence that followed. He didn’t want to hear her excuses. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that you didn’t betray Raven and give up Shaw, tell me you didn't try to murder Clarke. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Echo was quiet, tears streaming down her face. If he looked closely, he could imagine the streaks they would leave in her white face paint. He knew they weren’t borne of regret. They weren’t for Clarke. Those tears were for herself, that she got caught, that she was going to lose him because of it.

“And, what, you’ve just forgiven her for leaving you to die?” she said.

“I have,” he replied in earnest.

She met his eyes in a challenging stare that rubbed him the wrong way. “Yet you won’t forgive me?”

Bellamy stepped closer, searching for a glimmer of understanding in her eyes but finding only rotten contempt staring back at him.

“I _had_ forgiven you. Now I see that I was blind.”

“Bellamy—”

“You’ve broken my heart, you know that? I thought we had a chance.”

Echo’s fist clenched. “No, you didn’t.”

“Pardon?”

“You’ve been at war with yourself since we landed. Since Madi told you Clarke was alive.”

His teeth ground together, his jaw so tight it hurt. “I thought we’d established that you don’t know me.”

“But I do.”

“Is that why you tried to kill her?”

“What?”

He swallowed. “If you know me, you would know that I…”

“Spit it out, Bellamy,” she seethed, wanting to push him to the edge.

But he reined in the word that was fluttering between his vocal cords and said, “I _care_ for her. And given that you have a jealous streak—”

“That’s hardly true,” she yelled, and he knew he’d struck a nerve.

A memory from the Ring resurfaced, taunting him with the thought, _You should have known_. He threw the memory at her now. “May I remind you what happened when you found out that Raven and I had sex?”

“I was caught off-guard!”

“For _two weeks_?” Bellamy reminded her. Echo had ignored both of them after it had come out that he and Raven had fallen into bed a few times in the months following Praimfaya. They had just been friends looking for a little comfort, but Echo hadn’t cared. “It didn’t mean anything and happened _years_ before you found out.”

“And you kept it from me.”

Bellamy actually laughed. “It didn’t occur to me because it wasn’t relevant! And it never came up because it _wasn’t relevant_! And I think part of you knew it didn’t matter, and thank God for that, because if you hadn’t, for all I know you would have strangled Raven.”

“Clarke left you to die!”

“ _And I’m still here!_ ” he yelled.

“No thanks to her.”

“ _Because_ of her!” Bellamy was about to lose his mind. He was a bundle of rage and guilt and utter disgust, fraying around the edges, straying from his balanced path of head over heart. “She saved us all. And you, specifically. When Emori’s suit had a tear, Clarke gave up her own suit instead of listening to me. I wanted to give _your_ suit to Emori. If Clarke had listened, you would have died of the same radiation from which she suffered for _months_. You owe her your life twofold.”

“That was six years before she left you for dead.”

“Life-debts don’t expire, nor are they vulnerable to circumstance. Maybe I should have known you wouldn’t honor that.”

“So you’ll just assume the worst of me, now?”

“Until further notice, yeah.” He got up to leave, having had more than enough. “I’ve wasted enough time on you. Stay away from me. And if Clarke ever returns, stay away from her.”

“You can't take back something like this,” Echo said, apparently under the impression that it could change his mind. “Ever.”

He was already at the door. “I don’t intend to try.”

“Fuck you, Bellamy.”

“If getting the last word will grant you solace, you can have it.”

To his surprise, she didn't take it.

Bellamy walked away.

 

+

 

Clarke woke to a white ceiling. A sterile, lemon scent.

Without warning, her heart rate gained speed.

Mount Weather. She was back in Mount Weather. They had her in quarantine again. Images of what would follow flashed in her mind: chocolate cake, alarms, running, Anya’s blood, her mother’s relieved cry, falling into Bellamy’s arms, seeing Lexa’s war-paint-smeared face for the first time in the dim light of a tent, her lips against hers, betrayal at the gates, followed by more alarms, Bellamy’s hand on her own—the stench of death for which they were responsible—

“Ms. Griffin, you’re awake,” came the voice of a man.

The past fell, giving way to the present. She looked around, and the walls were bare of paintings. Instead of white, she was still wearing her black tank top, jacket, and leggings, and instead of Wallace there sat a much younger man by her bedside. The same one that had searched her dropship.

“My name is Commander Aristotle Haverford, but I go by Ari.” He was young, perhaps younger than her, with a face that could have easily resembled Finn’s were it not for his longer forehead, his slender jaw. That, and his hair was cropped short and a rusty red, a color she hadn’t seen in a long time. His eyes, wide and deep brown, covered a calculating stare well behind a well-meaning demeanor. She recognized it from her own habits.

“Commander,” she murmured, eyeing the patch on his jacket and shaking her head. How strange.

“Yes. And you’re in our hospital. My partner June shot your leg with a tranquilizer dart. How are you feeling, Ms. Griffin?”

Still dazed, Clarke said the first thing that popped into her mind. “No one’s called me that in years.”

Ari frowned, puzzled. “What would you prefer to be called?”

“Just that.”

“You seem a bit tired, Ms. Griffin, but I’m afraid I need to ask you a few questions.”

She sighed and stared at the ceiling. She wanted to ask him if she was a prisoner, but she already knew that she was. “Fire away,” she said. She needed a radio. Maybe if she complied, he would let her contact her people.

She answered everything as short as possible. About the Ark, the first apocalypse, the second, the destruction of Shallow Valley. She left out some minor details in an effort to seem the least threatening as possible, but overall she was truthful.

“And now you want to settle here?” Ari said.

“It is, quite literally, the only option we have.”

“How long can you sustain life on the Eligius IV ship?”

She thought for a moment, actually unsure. In theory, they should be able to sustain life indefinitely with Monty’s algae. But was she willing to open up the possibility of another Ark? “I’m not confident that we would be able to survive for very long,” she said carefully.

“Who is your leader?”

That was a tricky question. “My daughter. She took ALIE 2, which our people believe is sacred. They listen to her.”

Ari smirked. “But who is your true leader?”

“Me,” she answered, realizing it as she said it. “And a man named Bellamy Blake.”

 

+

 

Raven appeared at the door to his bedroom that he would share with Murphy once he was out of medbay. She leaned her hip against the doorframe, her arms crossing in front of her. “When I told you what happened, I didn’t mean ‘break up with her.’”

“How could you think I wouldn’t?”

Raven bit her lip, contemplation in her eyes. “You’ve changed.”

“What?”

“You’re back to the way you were. You’re Earth Bellamy again.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I was much different before…”

“Ring Bellamy wouldn’t have pulled the plug.”

“I don’t see why.”

Raven shrugged. “Ring Bellamy thought Clarke was dead.”

“So you’re saying… that Ring Bellamy wouldn’t have broken up with Ring Echo for nearly choking Clarke to death because he would have thought Clarke was already dead?”

“…Yes?”

Bellamy laughed. “It needed to happen, Raven.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No,” he said automatically but held his tongue. Clarke’s love for him felt too sacred, too special. He’d trust Raven with anything, but this was too fragile to him, too new. He needed to keep it close to his heart.

“You can tell me.”

He picked another reason. “Maybe we only worked on the Ring.”

Raven, clearly not entirely appreciating his vagueness, nodded slightly. “All right. As long as you're happy. Our family survived Emori and Murphy breaking up; we can survive this.”

A shadow fell over Bellamy’s heart. “Can we survive it if Clarke is dead again?”

Raven tensed. “Don’t talk like that.”

“We haven’t heard—”

“I _said_ ,” she snapped, “don’t talk like that.”

 

+

 

“Now that I’ve answered your questions,” Clarke began, sitting up fully in bed. “Could you answer some of mine?”

“It’s only fair,” consented Ari.

“As you know, I have the black blood. Nightblood, as we call it. Do you need it to survive on this planet?”

Ari nodded, and her face fell. “Yes. The two suns cause too much radiation for the non-genetically modified.” Then, noticing her expression, “What’s wrong?”

“My daughter and I are the only Nightbloods.”

Ari exhaled harshly. “How do you expect for them to live here, then?”

Sweat was forming on her forehead, on the back of her neck. Again, she’d treaded into territory that was far too familiar. “There’s a way for my mother to make them Nightbloods by replicating the formula in a zero-G environment.” That was a lie. She had no idea if they had the necessary equipment to make nightblood on Eligius IV.

“All right,” Ari said, still skeptical.

“For now, is there any way I can contact my people? Or could you, on my behalf? I would like them to know that I survived.”

He popped an eyebrow. “You didn’t bring a radio?”

“Rough landing,” she lied again. She suspected that like Mount Weather had, these people were blocking her signal. She knew it was true, and she suspected that Ari did as well, but was playing dumb to seem trustworthy. All of this had happened to her before. The past was running after her, grabbing at her throat. It’s hungry for her; it should have killed her the first time around.

“Commander,” she said, bristling at the title. “I know how this game works. But I’m asking you if we could stop.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I want you to be honest with me.”

“I’ve done nothing but.”

She didn’t waver eye-contact. “So, Commander, my radio broke because of the rough landing?”

He curled his lip before nodding.

“Even though there was no outside damage to show for it?”

His face was carefully still as he nodded again.

She sighed. “Well, I prefer a tranq dart to a bullet, so thank you for that. But I need to know where I stand. I’m your hostage.”

“Yes.”

“Will I be kept in this room?”

“Yes.”

“And I will not be able to contact my people?”

“Not for the foreseeable future.”

Clarke laid her head back on the pillow. “Thank you for your honesty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE BECHO BREAKUP WAS THE SECOND SCENE (AFTER CLARKE'S MONOLOGUE) THAT I WROTE FOR THIS FIC AND I HAVE BEEN DYING TO POST IT SINCE THE BEGINNING. hope you like it. love your comments!! they're so motivating!!!


	5. Frigida Manūs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> frigida manūs: cold hands.
> 
> bellamy aligns his priorities on the ship while clarke aims to figure out more about the new planet...

 

> "Inhuman one, your strength will destroy you, and you will take no pity  
>  on the child and young one, or on me who have no future, who will soon be  
>  bereft of you;"
> 
>             -Andromache to Hector in  _The Iliad_ (trans. Caroline Alexander)
> 
>  

“Bellamy.” She’d come up behind him like a ghost.

“Octavia.”

Not much of a greeting after over a hundred years, not that he’d wanted one at all. “I don’t think you should be here,” he said, not wanting to be near her.

“You sent Clarke down there?” she asked, ignoring him. Her reflection in the window was surprisingly sad. Maybe the cryo had a reverse effect and had thawed her heart. Wishful thinking.

“She sent herself,” Bellamy said. “Please, leave.”

Octavia didn’t listen. “Because she has nightblood, and the rest of us don’t.”

“Yes. Is that all?” What was she getting at?

She crossed her arms. “I’ll leave you alone, Bell. Just… Do you want someone to protect Madi?”

Oh. _Fuck_. She was right. It wasn’t common knowledge that one would probably need nightblood to survive on the planet, since Eligius III had all had it, but it wouldn’t take long for the people to put two and two together. He glanced over to the center of the common room, where Madi was sitting with Gaia, who had been placed on one of the couches here after the medbay had filled up.

“It doesn’t have to be me,” Octavia said. “But it has to be someone.”

Bellamy sighed. As badly as he wished he could, he couldn’t possibly trust his sister with Clarke’s child. Not yet, anyway. It would still be in her interest to kill the girl and reclaim her old title, and her concern for the girl’s life could all be an act.

“I will,” he decided aloud. “When I can’t, I’ll get Indra, and Gaia once she’s better. Maybe Echo.”

Octavia’s lip curled. “Just because the Azgeda bitch is your girlfriend doesn’t mean she’s trustworthy.”

He met her eyes. “We aren’t together anymore.”

He’d caught her off-guard. “Why?” she asked.

Bellamy sighed, looking back at the planet outside the window. “You know why.”

 

 

“Bellamy.”

His eyes shot open. Had he fallen asleep? He was on one of the chairs in the common room, his neck stiff—fuck, how long had it been?

Raven’s face hovered above his own. “They sent us a message.”

He sat up so fast he pulled something in his back. He swore. Raven’s urgency was briefly broken by a cackle. “Old man,” she teased.

Rubbing his back, he followed her down the hall to the control room, where Shaw waited.

“I’m opening it now,” he said, exchanging a nod with Raven.

It was a video. A man, red hair, young, sat in front of a white wall. “People of Eligius IV, my name is Commander Aristotle Harris. I am here to inform you that we, the people of New Planet, have one of your leaders in our possession. She is being kept alive and comfortable” —all of the air in Bellamy’s lungs rushed out in a sigh of intense relief—“for the time being, and you have no reason to worry about her so long as you do not pose a threat to us.”

Raven bit her lip. “This is…”

Bellamy nodded. “Yeah.”

“Our president, after holding a vote for our senate who reached the same verdict, is refusing to allow your ship to land without facing retaliation until we conduct an investigation. Via video calls, we will question your people one by one until we can determine that your intentions are what your leader says they are. The interviews will commence starting tomorrow at O’eight hours. See you then. I will now play a message from our guest.”

The man fizzled away, and Clarke appeared on the screen. Bellamy stepped closer, analyzing her appearance, every detail. If something were wrong, she would send them a message somehow, right? She seemed comfortable enough, sitting on a white bed in a white room that sent the chill from under the mountain up his spine, but she seemed physically unharmed.

“Now,” said someone offscreen.

Clarke lifted her blue gaze to meet the lens. “Bellamy,” she said, and his breath caught. “Tell them everything, and then get down here as soon as you can.”

Her gaze flitted to something behind the camera, and panic flared in her eyes. “No, not yet!” she yelled. “Bellamy, remember your promise. Please.”

And the transmission went dark.

Several minutes passed before Raven spoke, a whisper: “Your promise?”

Bellamy swallowed hard. “To keep Madi safe.”

“When did you promise that?”

“Right before I put that chip in her brain.”

A look of understanding and guilt settled between her eyebrows. “Makes sense.”

“She wouldn’t have left me to die for nothing, Raven.”

“I knew that. That’s why I never—I never thought what Echo did to her was right. It’s why I got over it.” She looked to Shaw. “Shaw helped me realize that… we were always putting her in impossible situations, and then judging her for how she handled them.”

She placed a hand on Bellamy’s shoulder. “I judged you sometimes, too. We all did. The two of you have always had too much on your plates, and it wasn’t fair for us to blame you for trying to save us. I always thought that my job—the tech, the machinery—was the hardest, but that isn’t true. It’s harder to deal with people, with war. It’s all so unpredictable. People are not equations.”

Tears had been lurking behind Bellamy’s eyes since seeing Clarke on screen, but only now did they threaten to fall. “Thank you for saying that, Raven.” He squared his shoulders. “There’s something I have to do.”

#

 

It had been three days of pacing and playing it safe when Clarke finally dared to say, “Tell me about this planet.”

Ari and June always took turns eating lunch with her. It was strange, but Clarke preferred it to being alone so she’d never questioned it.

June—always the quieter—only shrugged, clearly not knowing where to begin.

Clarke pushed. “Does it have a name?”

June chewed on her sandwich—with _real bread_ —for a moment before answering, “Kind of. When our ancestors landed here, they called it ‘New Planet’ as a placeholder for a real name, but we’ve never changed it. More pressing issues, I guess.”

Clarke smiled. The eternal sloth of the human race never failed to either frustrate or amuse her. In this case, it was the latter.

“I should know what I’m in for.”

June shook her head. “That’s if we let you live.”

“I know what’s in for me if I die,” she said, swallowing a bite of her own meal. She had requested some of that bread and some assorted berries. Her stomach was a wreck from nerves, and this food was familiar to her. “I want to know about if I live. If _we_ live.”

“Well, we landed here about two, three hundred years ago? Not all of us made it—one of our dropships was never seen again. But once we settled, we established a miniature United States, I guess. We've had obstacles, but they can and have been overcome.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. The most recent attempted coup was twenty years ago, but our military crushed it.”

“Your military… does it have a hand in governing the people?”

“So what if it does?”

“Just wondering,” Clarke insisted, but her mind was reeling. _Sounds too good to be true… sounds subtly totalitarian_.

June’s face fell as much as her stony nature would allow. “You don’t know how hard it is to live on a planet that actively tries to destroy you every day.”

Clarke clenched her fists. “Yes, I do. But go on.”

June scowled. “You think you do, but you don't.”

“Then please, enlighten me."

"It isn't anything like earth. I don't know what else I'm permitted to tell you."

"You can't just say something like then without elaborating," Clarke said, pushing a raspberry around her bowl. She hadn't seen any of the New Planet beyond the brief moments after landing. Hell, they could be _underwater_ right now, and she wouldn't know. All she knew was this white room.

"I just did," June said, finishing her last bite and running a hand through her short black hair. "What was earth like after... after Pry-"

"Praimfaya nearly killed me," Clarke filled in. "I lived on that planet alone for six years before my people came back and everything was normal again.”

“Normal? You said there was a war.”

“War was normal on earth, Lieutenant.”

June shoved more of her sandwich into her mouth with one hand and gave her a finger gun with the other, shooting her an ironic bullet. “Gotcha, Clarke.”

#

 

“Bellamy.”

Her voice, sweet and melting like honey butter, put him at ease. Slow, like a fog lifting, the outline of a woman’s face materialized above him. They were in her house—before Eligius had made a wreck of it—and she was at peace with a healthy flush to her cheeks and a small smile spreading across her face.

Her hair was longer, and when he dragged a palm down his face to rub the sleep away, it was smooth.

“You slept in,” Clarke chided as he sat up.

“Or did you wake up early?” he countered, smirking.

“We have things to do to—”

“Things to do? We just won a war.”

“I—”

He held our his hand. “Come here.”

She took it, her cold palm warming against his skin. Her hands were always so cold. _Your hand was always warm, Bellamy,_ came an echo from somewhere deep in his subconscious _. Always warm. And guns are cold. So in the thick of my mind, if the gun was warm, then that meant that your body—_

Her body.

Clarke’s face went pale in front of him, and her palm was cold once more.

“No—” he murmured, but her knees were buckling—

A clatter rocked him and sent his eyes shooting open. He sat up in bed, heart racing as he glanced around for any signs of danger.

“Bellamy?”

He let out a heavy breath. Just Madi, her head peeking out at him from behind her bedroom door.

“What are you doing here?” she said, a giggle tucked between the words.

He blinked. Right. After Clarke’s message— _reminder_ —he had come to tell Madi, only to find her sleeping. Not wanting to leave her, he had relieved Indra of her duty of watching her and moved his cot in front of Madi’s door. He moved it close enough so that if the door were to open, it would hit the side of the frame and wake him up—the light sleeper he was—and apparently, it had worked.

“I’m here in case something happens,” he said, scratching his jaw. “Clarke did tell me to keep an eye on you, you know.”

Madi raised one eyebrow in an expression almost identical to her adoptive mother’s. “I don’t think this is what she meant.”

“Of course it is. She’s very intense.”

Madi laughed.

Then, Bellamy remembered what he had come to tell her. “Madi, speaking of Clarke…”

Her eyes widened before she frowned, putting on her impenetrable “commander” face. “Just tell me,” she said, and it sounded more like an order.

He recognized this, too, from Clarke. He patted the spot next to him on the edge of his cot, and Madi slid through the doorway and sat beside him.

“She’s okay,” Bellamy assured her, shutting down her deepest doubts right away and watching her face ease up. “Eligius III sent us two messages last night. The first was from them, telling us that we will all be questioned before they will allow us to land, and… the second one was from Clarke.”

“What did she say?” Madi asked. “Was she okay? Where are they keeping her?”

He placed a hand on her arm. “She’s fine. They’re keeping her in a nice-ish room. She told me to tell them everything.” _And to protect you_. “And… and we’ll get to see her soon.”

Madi gave a small smile. “Good.” She laughed, a sound alight with relief. “I’m—I’m so happy she’s okay.” She sniffled.

“I know, I know. We’ll see her again soon.”

But part of him knew that he was lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is kind of a filler! i've had a TIME lol. i've been through the start of a new (harder) semester, a breakup, and a 20th birthday. i'm also drowning in applications for jobs and housing and :) i love college :) i swear :)
> 
> also it took me forever to come up with a title for this chapter because every time i translate something from english into latin i'm like 90% sure i'm right but if it's the slightest bit complicated then there really isn't a reliable way to double check it online because i have yet to find an online translator for latin besides whitaker's words that actually works, and whitaker's words only does one word at a time so that doesn't help me beyond double checking dumb shit like "cold hands" rip. i wanted to call this chapter "In ea/eius credaris" which i THINK means "you should/let you believe in her" because it's a passive subjunctive second person singular but literally no website thought that that was a relevant latin word other than whitaker's words and i couldn't figure out whether i should use "ea" or "eius" so HERE this chapter is called COLD HANDS hope you LIKED IT I GUESS.

**Author's Note:**

> even though like i said this fic is the last fuck i have to give it's also been fun to write just like narcissus is. in between school and my own novel, this story, like narcissus, offers a kind of stress relief. but after this, i'm definitely gonna press stop on the fanfic, at least for the 100. sorry.
> 
> but who knows? maybe season 6 won't suck and the fandom won't need me anymore.
> 
> some links: [tumblr](http://www.discovering.tumblr.com), [youtube](http://www.youtube.com/c/juliacarol), [twitter](http://www.https://twitter.com/likerainwater)


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